Former state trooper, 77, gets six month sentence for civil rights-era slaying

A former Alabama state trooper pleaded guilty Monday to the shooting death of a man 45 years ago at the height of the civil rights movement.

The trooper, James Bonard Fowler of Black, pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree manslaughter. He had been charged with two counts of murder in the shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson during a melee in a restaurant in Marion in 1965.